MultiCharts 7.0 Pre-Alpha Release

NEW FEATURES

Manual Trading

Manual trading is now available in MultiCharts. This is the first version of our implementation and more features will be added later, based on the feedback received from our pre-alpha testers. This is a short description of what you can expect to see, and the key benefits that we thought of so far.

Visual Chart Trading

Depth of Market window

Trade Bar toolbar

These tools are covered in more details in the sections below.

Visual Chart Trading

We offer our users visual trading that is rich in features. You can drag and drop orders directly to the chart and apply orders and entire trading strategies with a right-click. MultiCharts supports simple single orders, OCO groups, as well as automated entry and exit strategies.

Strategy levels (such as profit target and stop loss) can be easily changed and moved around with just a mouse click. Strategy names are shown on the levels so you know where they came from. The cursor tracks the price on the chart, and when you right-click on the chart, the appropriate price is shown for the order you are about to place. You can modify orders by right-clicking on them. For example, you can attach exit strategies, or OCO groups by right-clicking or dragging & dropping them onto the appropriate order.

Active orders are shown in a bright color, while pending orders (which wait for the active order to occur before becoming active) are shown in transparent colors. Changing the size, or the price, of the parent order will automatically recalculate and update the dependent orders. More on automation of entries and exits can be found in the sections below.

Entry Automation

This feature allows the user to automate certain ways of entering positions. You can avoid repetitive tasks and increase your productivity. The orders can be applied visually to the order by dragging and dropping them onto the chart, right-clicking on the chart. This is helpful when you need to apply an order pair quickly.

We have included four entry strategies – Breakout, Fade, Breakout Up/Fade, and Breakout Down/Fade.

Each strategy is an OCO group, meaning that if one order is filled, the other is canceled. You can visually change the order levels, which saves a lot of time while managing your orders. In addition to visually changing the orders, you can also change the parameters through dialog windows. You can specify absolute values for price levels, or define the distance of your brackets in percent values or points (pips).

You can save your favorite strategy parameters as a template to be used later.

Exit Automation

This feature allows the user to automate certain ways of exiting positions. Of course, you can right-click on an order and apply an exit strategy. You can also drag and drop the strategy of your choice onto the appropriate order to apply it. However, to fully take advantage of automation capabilities, you can auto-apply an exit strategy to any new order you create. Contrary to competing products, exit strategies in MultiCharts are treated individually. For example, you can apply Breakeven and Profit Target strategies without configuring the Stop Loss strategy. This allows even more flexibility for our users.

You will also see Trigger points and lines on the chart, which will activate the order once the price crosses this level.

We have included five exit strategies– Bracket Orders, Breakeven, Trailing Stop, Stop Loss, and Profit Target.

Just like in entry automation, each strategy is an OCO group. You can visually change the order levels, which saves a lot of time while managing your orders. In addition to visually changing the orders, you can change the parameters more precisely through dialog windows. You can specify absolute values for price levels, or define the distance of your brackets in percent values or points (pips).

You can save your favorite strategy parameters as a template to be used later.

Depth of Market (DOM) Window

IMPORTANT – Only the following three brokers are currently supported in the DOM:

Interactive Brokers

Open E Cry

Zen-Fire

MultiCharts now has a Depth of Market (DOM) window. In the DOM the market is represented as a series of price levels with corresponding volume levels for each price level.

The DOM in MultiCharts now is semi-static, which means it will re-center automatically once the price hits the upper or lower bounds on the screen. This keeps us within the bounds set by the Trading Technologies’ patent on the DOM technology. However, based on the feedback received in our discussion blog, we decided to include fully dynamic and semi-static DOM modules in MC. The fully dynamic DOM will be re-centered after each received tick.

In MultiCharts 7.0 beta 1 we will make several improvements to the DOM. We will add the ability to drag-and-drop orders, apply them through a right-click, and the advanced coloring visualization that you can currently see in visual chart trading. Trading with strategies in the DOM will also be available at that time. Finally, we will include the fully dynamic DOM module in MC 7.0 beta 1, so that users can choose which mode they prefer.

Trade Bar

Trade Bar looks like a standard toolbar in most modern browsers. It contains a series of tabs, and you can trade through different brokers by switching tabs. Another important benefit is that the Trade Bar allows you to trade from any place in the application. The main advantage is that you can see all of the currently connected brokers, and place orders through several brokers at the same time. For example, you may have one broker for Forex and another one for futures, and place orders on both without logging in or out.

Broker Profiles

We have introduced a different way of managing brokers you trade through. All information about the broker plug-in configuration is now stored in the corresponding profile. However, the main advantage is that you can create and save several profiles for any broker, each of which can store different settings.

The biggest advantage is the ability to trade several brokers at the same time from one trading platform. There is no need to purchase two software licenses, have multiple programs or multiple computers to trade from. You can simply connect two, three, or more broker profiles, and place trades through each one. Additionally, you can see all of your orders from different brokers in one consolidated report. You can filter the reports by broker, which is very convenient for reviewing your performance.

The multi-account trading functionality is a great feature! Does this also mean one will be able to allocate different lot sizes to different accounts for a single trade — e.g., 15 lots for account #1, 25 lots for account #2?

There is no allocation planned for accounts, the Order Bar works in the following way – whatever broker you click on, and whatever amount you purchase will go to the account indicated at time of purchase. You may, however, choose a different account from the drop-down list of accounts, and place the same trade there if you like.

Complete automated pair trading is not possible, since instruments tick with various speeds. However, it’s possible to set it up pretty close to ideal, when you write a strategy that uses Global Variables and passes information from one chart to another. Up until MultiCharts 7, strategies would only recalculate on new incoming ticks, which would mean that there may be seconds before the next tick, and minutes for slow markets. Therefore, you would experience a gap in your trades.

In MultiCharts 7, we have added a new keyword that may help the situation and make autotrading – RecalcAfterLastBar, which forces the script to recalculate a certain amount of time after the last bar. This ensure that your trades will get generated in MultiCharts, although we cannot guarantee that they will be executed at the broker.

So, automated pair trading is possible, although it will take some time to set up.